Wallacian Campaign Session #07
General Summary
map by Gunther
You find yourself in a darkened forest. The ground beneath you begins to quake, as decaying hands and arms thrust upward. As zombies begin to crawl out of the ground towards you, you turn to flee. Your feet feel like they are sinking into deep mud, and branches snag on your limbs, slowing you down. Your heart pounding, you hear the zombie horde closing in on you. The nearest zombie reaches out to you, and just as it touches your shoulder...Almalexia woke up with a start, her heart pounding. She did a quick sweep of the ruins, but found nothing amiss. The fey "dreamcatcher" she had set up earlier was still there, not destroyed like the one she had set up in the forest the night before. Since she was on the third watch, she simply stayed up until she and Squirrelly could relieve Cressidien and Silvermoon. In the morning, the party descended into the dark tunnel with those who needed light to see in back, each holding a Light-spell-glowing stone in the their fists. The tunnel was 10 feet wide, and about 12-23 feet tall. The slope was about half as steep as a typical stairway - walking was not difficult, but a cart would be difficult to control. About 30 feet down they encountered an area where the tunnel had shifted out of alignment several inches, and also twisted a few degrees. A thin seam of green crystals formed a line where the two sections met. Ruu recognized this as a "schism line", formed during The Shattering. It indicates an area where magical shockwaves shifted reality when two or more crossed each other, or where some nearby magical barrier was affected by a passing magical shockwave. A little while later the party passed another schism line, apparently returning the tunnel to the original alignment. At about 50 feet below the surface the tunnel leveled out just before a set of rusted iron double-doors. It appears that silt washed down from the surface over the centuries eventually built up enough weight to bend the doors inward just enough to allow the water to wash through. The bent, rusted doors still blocked most of the passage. {Koravhik?} broke down the iron doors, allowing the party to enter the level tunnel beyond. On their left they found a small room. It contained a human skeleton and rotted remains of a desk and some shelving. A thorough search revealed a few vellum scraps of what appeared to be a ledger of some sort. They could not make out what was being tracked, but were able to find dates at the top of a few pages which seemed to be from before The Shattering, during the God Wars. Near the skeleton were found a few bits of rusted brass buckles and buttons, but no coins. The skeleton wore a brass necklace and pendant. The pendant was in the shape of half a disk, the edge where it met the missing half a jagged zig-zag. On the face of the pendant was the engraved image of half a key. The pendant had the faint aura abjuration magic. Further down, the tunnel opened into a large 25 foot tall room. On one wall was a large, 20 foot tall, 10 foot wide wooden door. The door was surprisingly intact, though it was rotted or or splintered in a few spot, and had a large 5 foot wide hole in the upper left-hand corner. Getting a boost from Koravhik, Cressidien peered out through the hole. he saw only darkness to the side, above, and below, apparently a large chasm. However, about 40 feet away he saw a flat stone wall with what appeared to be a 20 foot tall door, matching the one that he was peering through. On the walls to either side of the door were found brass and bronze machinery. Gears, and chains, and hand wheels, all apparently linked together for some purpose. To get a better look at the mechanism, {who?} brought out the Light-spelled glowing rock, brightening the entire room. As the light seeped into a passageway opposite of the entrance tunnel, the sound of bones scraping on stone was heard. A group of human, elven, and goliath skeletons shambled into the room with murderous intent. As most of the party smashed their bony opponents, Almalexia crouched in the corner at the base of the large door, under the 5 foot hole. Apparently the sound of battle attracted a denizen of the dark chasm, as a large Carrion Crawler squirmed through the hole in the door and attacked the nearest living creature, Almalexia. Most of the party turned towards the new monster while a couple continued wading through the skeletons, blocking the door to keep them bottled up. The large size of the Carrion Crawler forced some of the party to clamber over the mechanism in order to flank the beast, almost activating it as they stepped on various levers and cogs. After vanquishing their foes, the party was able to deduce that they needed to turn two wheels, one on each side of the door, in order to operate the machinery. Doing so, they watched as the 20 foot tall door tiled outward into the chasm. The drawbridge locked in the horizontal position, reaching halfway across the chasm. Carefully walking out onto the bridge, they got a better look at the opposite side. There appeared to be a narrow, 1-2 foot wide ledge at the base of the opposing drawbridge. The far wooden bridge also had a 5 foot wide hole in it, though this one was only about 5 feet above the base. There was some debate on how to cross the gap, as apparently no one had any grappling hooks. Finally, Cressidien tied one end of a rope around his waist and then easily leapt across the chasm to the ledge on the far side. Peering through the hole in the wooden drawbridge, he spied a duplicate mechanism to open this one. Cressidien secure his end of the rope, and Silvermoon dexterously walked across it to join him. Together they managed to lower the drawbridge, allowing the rest of the party to cross over. A pair of bronze doors were directly across from the drawbridge room, with ten foot tall and wide tunnels leading to the left and right. Deciding to clear their flanks before tackling the bronze doors, the party went to the right and found a large, vertical hemisphere bisecting the old tunnels. The interior surface of the hemisphere was vitrified into a glassy sheen. The flat surface of the hemisphere appeared to line up with the presumed walls of the room behind the bronze doors, and score-marks radiating out from the center, as though they were blast scares. Searching closely they found a four inch wide greenish stone orb embedded in the center of the blast marks. The orb had a half-inch wide bronze band inscribed around the circumference, with no visible seam in the metal. Casting Identify on the orb revealed it to be an arcane focus that amplified the caster's spell power. Almalexia{?} recalled once reading that some magical items were caught by the magical shockwaves of The Shattering and cast into the ethereal plane, blasted great distances around the world until they either lost momentum or collided with a magical ward or barrier. The party reasoned that the orb was probably one such magic item, and that it had collided with what ever wards were protecting the room behind the bronze doors. The tunnels leading beyond the hemisphere were collapsed, so the party next searched the tunnels on the left side of the drawbridge room. They found several more skeletons, but this time none of them were undead. Again, they found bits of rusted buckles and buttons, but no coins. One skeleton bore a bronze necklace and pendant that was similar to the one found on the far side of the chasm. Cressidien put to the two pendants together they snaped firmly into place, forming a image of a key. Examining the bronze doors revealed a normal-looking keyhole, but the circular pendant did not fit into it. The doors themselves radiated an aura of abjuration magic. At a loss to unlock the doors, and not having access to anyone with lockpicking skill, the party then had Koravhik bash down the doors withing a maul obtained from one of the goliath skeletons they had defeated earlier. Each solid hit rang loudly throughout the caverns, but fortunately the sound did not attract any more hostile creatures to their location. When the doors finally broke inward, they revealed a small room with another set of bronze doors on the far wall. In each of the four corners of the room was a large suit of strange plate armor. Firstly, the proportions were odd, with short legs and arm, a large pot-belly, and a narrow helm. Secondly, the plates seemed to be comprised of cast iron, bound together by bronze bands and rivets. Sauroff's Detect Magic spell was still up, and he noted that the armor radiated auras of conjuration and abjuration. When the first person stepped into the room {who?}, there was a "thoom" sound similar to a gas oven starting, and an orange glow began to grow between the plates of cast iron. At the same moment, a flash of light signaled a glyph firing off a spell, and everyone except Silvermoon and Cernan were hit with a Slow spell. One of the armor suits began to stir, advancing towards the party. As the armor neared the doorway, the faceplate rose and a wide cone of fire belched out, scorching several of the party members. The party fought back against the iron construct, but it was hard to land a solid hit on it, and their strikes seemed to do little damage. So far only one of the suits armor had activated, but the other three were still glowing brighter as time passed. Finally Cressidien, who was carrying the assembled key pendant, stepped into the room with their armored foes. The moment his foot landed on the floor, all four suits of armor stopped moving and their glows went out. Examining the locked bronze doors at the far side of the room revealed them to be identical to the first set. Still lacking a lockpick, the party resorted to bashing in this set of doors as well. When the doors swung open they revealed a 20 foot wide chamber that stretched about 15 feet into the stone before it abruptly ended where the roof had collapsed. Before the rubble began were several racks of gleaming bronze weapons: swords, daggers, halberds, spears, and even a few finely-crafted wooden bows and staves. Recognizing that bronze weapon are often magical, due to the anti-magic properties of iron, the party stepped forward into the inner vault. However, as they approached, several of the weapons rose into the air, and moved menacingly toward the party. The weapons were not going to be claimed without a fight! The party did battle with levitating bronze weapons, reducing their numbers by slashing and smashing them with their own weapons. Then a staff rose in the back of the room. It was comprised of dark wood, festooned with bright inlays of silver snow flakes. The staff made a quick twirl, and the air around the melee became obscured by a dense fog of chilled air. Not relying on sight favored the animated weapons, and the battle began to swing against our heroes. Then Cernan{?} was able to find the staff in the fog and managed to damaged it enough to break its concentration. The staff was able to recover and cast a Hail Storm spell that caught most of the party, but then it was swarmed and reduced it to splinters. They then made short work of the remaining misbehaving cutlery. A search of the vault revealed four remaining intact weapons. The rest either had been destroyed fighting the party, or had succumbed to the ravages of time. Sauroff cast Identify on each of the weapons, and discovered that only one of them, a magical longbow, had a completely intact enchantment. The other three had partly degraded enchantments that would impart a negative effect on it's wielder, possibly even bad enough to be called a curse. However, he stated that a more skilled wizard than him should be able to repair the enchantments, or at the very least lessen the negative effect. This was acceptable to several of the heroes, and the weapons were divided up as detailed below. The party then retraced their steps back to surface, raising both drawbridges as they went. Those with new magic items attuned to them before settling down for a well-deserved long rest. Almalexia, however, had another unsettling dream:
You find yourself in a darkened forest. The ground beneath you begins to quake, as decaying hands and arms thrust upward. As zombies begin to crawl out of the ground towards you, you turn to flee. Your feet feel like they are sinking into deep mud, and branches snag on your limbs, slowing you down. Your heart pounding, you hear the zombie horde closing in on you. The nearest zombie reaches out to you, and just as it touches your shoulder... The dream resets... You find yourself in a darkened forest. The ground beneath you begins to quake, as decaying hands and arms thrust upward. As zombies begin to crawl out of the ground towards you, you raise your arm forward, grasping a familiar pendant, the silver feminine hand grasping a red orb glistening in the darkness. One by one, the zombies stop advancing, then fall to their knees, bowing to you. In your head, you hear a rasping female voice speaking to you: "Choose!" In her dream, Almalexia threw the pendant away into the darkness. The female voice hissed in her head...Thus ended the adventure beneath the Old Owl Tower.
Rewards Granted
Each player earned 470 XP.
Party Loot:
- Green Stone Orb of Arcane Focus (claimed by Almalexia)
- Boomerang Dagger (claimed by Cressidien)
- Corpse Slayer Longbow (claimed by Silvermoon)
- Greatsword of Vengeance (claimed by Cernan)
- Longsword of Life Transfer (claimed by Squirrelly)
Report Date
18 Dec 2022
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